


the other end of a telescope

by sagemb



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: M/M, No Spoilers for Infinity War, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), local man runs from his emotional problems, natasha romanoff's friend-oriented interrogation techniques: aka armchair therapy, only to realize that he carries them with him wherever he goes, steven g. rogers' super secret world tour 2018
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-08
Updated: 2018-05-08
Packaged: 2019-05-03 19:06:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,174
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14575632
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sagemb/pseuds/sagemb
Summary: "Are you afraid?"Of what?he wants to ask. He doesn't. He doesn't speak. If he closes his eyes, Bucky is right there in front of him: the downward slant of his eyes, the shape of his jawline. The mild, wan tone of voice he has now, like he's never been loud in his life. He imagines tracing the side of Bucky's face. Down on the bartop, his fingers move slowly. So gently you could think he's never killed.





	the other end of a telescope

**Author's Note:**

> Title from U2's "Love Is All We Have Left." Thanks, as always, to Rebecca (zachas) for beta and cheerleading.

It starts like this:

Natasha Romanoff knocks on his hotel room door.

"You're not telling me 'I told you so,'" she says, pushing past him to the bathroom and dropping an enormous leather handbag onto the vanity.

"I'm not," Steve agrees. He hasn't seen her since Leipzig, but he's seen the news about the Black Widow ducking out of a subpoena to come before the Senate Intelligence Committee. _Reading the terrain_ _,_ she'd said, months ago. How things change over the years.

She's stripping off her clothes layer by layer. They look glamorous and expensive, like she might be a businesswoman or an actress. He imagines that she must be very travel worn. There are no luxuries taken when you're on the run. When she's down to just her bra and underwear, he turns half away from her, almost embarrassed, then afraid that she'll judge him for feeling like he's supposed to be embarrassed, so he turns back to her again. She's looking at him full-on.

"Of course you wouldn't." She's as deadpan as ever: her version of surprise. "You didn't even think of saying it, did you?"

"How little you must think of me," he says dryly. "How’d you find me? Took you a while."

"Same way I always do," says Natasha, pulling on a black T-shirt and jeans. "I go where there's trouble and ask around about a big, blond, dumb-looking American."

"Hey," Steve says weakly.

"I said dumb- _looking._ You're about as dumb as Stark is poor, stop looking for affirmation."

Steve isn't aware that he does it until after the fact; he flinches.

"Jesus," Natasha says. "Look what it did to both of you. To all of us."

"If you're saying that I shouldn't have disagreed with—"

"You didn't say 'I told you so,'" she cuts in, remarkably gently. "Neither will I." Turning to the sink, she digs around in her bag—it really is enormous, you could probably fit an entire Labrador puppy into it—and pulls out two boxes of hair dye. "I need to change. So do you." She taps one of the boxes with her finger. ALL NATURAL LONG LASTING BEAUTY COLOR, it says. SUN-KISSED TRUFFLE / MEDIUM GOLDEN BROWN.

"Very generous of you." So, he learns, she's coming along with him. Is he relieved?

"You're welcome. Keep growing that beard out. It suits you."

"Does it," he says vaguely, looking at the instructions on the box.

"Well." She studies him. He wishes she wouldn't always look at him like something through a magnifying glass. "It's a sign of the times, I guess."

He holds up the box. "Help me with this."

"It helps to open up the packaging first. Is Barnes in Wakanda?"

"Are you in contact with Tony?"

"Are you?" she challenges.

Steve breaks eye contact, looks out the window. "I mailed him a burner."

"I'm not in contact with him," she says. "I'm not really in contact with anyone, anymore."

"Somehow I doubt that," he replies, smiling involuntarily. "Bucky's—yeah. So are Clint and Wanda and Sam, last I checked in with them. Scott Lang too."

"I got in touch with Nick last month, told him to check on Laura and the kids."

"Good," Steve says firmly. "Will he let you know if there's anything important?"

"It's Nick," Natasha says.

"So no?"

"So yes. He's no one now; he's compartmentalizing less. The spy thing... goes away, if you let it."

He nods. _Does it_ , he thinks. _Is it that easy._ "T'Challa's sister set me up with a secure connection. I'll let Clint know."

Natasha shows him how to dye his hair, and then bleaches and dyes her own. They sit in the room for a while with shower caps on. She looks at her phone, scrolling with her thumb, occasionally tapping on a few things. Like this, she could look like a young woman having a Friday night in with her friends.

"Do you have Instagram?" he asks.

She stares at him. "Do... you?"

Suddenly he's laughing so hard he can barely speak. "I think Tony and I are still following each other on Twitter," he chokes out.

 

* * *

 

He showers.

"You look like a lumberjack," she tells him. He scratches his jaw. He'll have to buy some kind of moisturizer or cream or something. Twenty-first century cosmetics are so diverse. The desire for luxury is a primary reason for innovation, he supposes. Luxury and warfare.

She showers.

"You look like a soldier," he says, and she smiles.

 

* * *

 

In their life, jet lag and sleep schedules have been trained out of their bodies: a mercenary sort of functionality. Even so: the brain resists. Some nights Steve finds himself awake for hours and hours, sinking into the bed, not quite too cold or too hot or too scared or too vigilant— just a dull kind of restlessness, enough to make him uneasy with himself.

Judging from the ever-so-slightly irregular breathing he can hear from the other bed, Natasha can't sleep either.

"Do you ever feel like," he says, struggling to find the words, "we're on the... brink of something—something coming to us very fast—that we're gonna have to step out and meet soon?"

"Oh," she says slowly. "The future, you mean."

"Or war," he agrees.

 

* * *

 

They go to Ushuaia; they go to Sucre, to Medellín. Cross the Atlantic: Denmark. Northern Switzerland, southern Italy, western Turkey. Hydra is all but extinct, but there are still facilities to bomb, leads to chase. It is dull, mechanical work. Steve does it.

In Ankara, Natasha buys them matching gold rings. She slips one onto Steve's left ring finger.

"You don't have to look so offended," she says, grinning wickedly. "I know you'd prefer if I were Barnes instead."

He turns from her and strides ahead, down the line of shops in the bazaar, not looking back. She catches up to him almost instantly, never mind the fact that she's a head shorter than him.

"I don't know why I still talk to you," he mutters. She laughs; this sort of callousness she's allowed.

 

* * *

 

Very early on—a few weeks after he'd left Wakanda, no more—Shuri had told him to stop calling.

"Or at least not every other day, Captain," she'd said, her voice light and teasing over the phone. "Your friend is safe with us. Progress is being made. I personally supervise the staff tasked to facilitating his recovery."

"Okay," Steve had replied, sitting down on the rickety hotel bed feeling abruptly winded. "Okay. But let me know if he—anything— _anything_ happens."

"Of course," Shuri had said, "but only if Sergeant Barnes gives us permission first. You are aware of patient confidentiality laws? I hope America has these as well."

"But he's asleep, how would he—" and then Steve had realized his status as an outsider. For as much as he and Bucky had lived like one brain in two organisms before, well. This was After. He would not be briefed in real time, because he was not a doctor nor a benefactor; he was only—

"I'm the only family he has left," he'd said, finally. "He will." But he'd felt angry, in that moment, that this was an issue that had to be considered. Something that he couldn’t take for granted anymore. And underneath that roiling anger in his chest: doubt.

There's nothing like keeping moving, keeping busy, to keep your head clear. Sit still for too long and your thoughts eat you up.

Even so, one thing hasn't changed between centuries, between chains of command. War is mostly waiting around.

Sleep comes slowly to him, as always.

 

* * *

 

In Harbin, icicles forming on his beard:

"So is this a repressed one-sided thing or were you two secret lovers since the thirties?"

"Stop," Steve says, scowling. "It wasn't—we weren't like that."

She raises her eyebrows. Waiting.

"I don't have to tell you anything—why do I—Jesus H. Christ, you're a goddamn—" He sighs. "I loved him, he loved me... at least, why else would he stick around?”

Natasha has a look on her face that says she wants to say something, but she stays quiet, watching him carefully.

“Was it physical? Sometimes, sure, when we got older, when we could get away with it. But we were always friends at the bottom of it—it wasn't _about_ sex, or whatever. We grew up like brothers, that's what all the historians say, and most of the time that's what we were. I'd—" He runs a hand through his hair. "I've done a lot for him. But I'd do a hell of a lot more than that. I will, I will, you better fuckin' believe it. I'll do anything. My life for his? I'm selfish, Natasha, I'd do it in a fucking heartbeat."

She looks away. So does he. "I believe you." Then, tugging his arm: "Come on. Let's go inside."

A dark bar, its occupants hunched and weathered. Steve draws side-eyed stares, Natasha looks of tentative fascination. They stop at the bar. She orders in Mandarin, and the bartender slaps five dusty shot glasses onto the bar, pours a clear liquor into each of them.

"Here," she says, sliding three of the glasses to him.

"I don't—"

"It's baijiu. It'll burn going down. You'll feel it to your fingers. Better than a space heater."

She's right. He doesn't get a buzz, of course, but it warms him up inside. Melted ice drips from his beard onto the bartop. The bartender wipes it down testily.

"You're fucked all the way up," she says at last.

"Well," he says. "He and I both oughta've died seventy-five years ago, so I doubt there's a metric for the two of us anymore."

"You love him still?"

"I," Steve begins, then stops, feeling the weight of regret; there's so much that he's held close to his chest, never told anyone about. Would things have been different, better, maybe, if he had? "He hasn't been around since 1944, give or take. But that's all right. I—we'll figure out who he is, get used to it."

"Are you afraid?"

 _Of what?_ he wants to ask. He doesn't. He doesn't speak. If he closes his eyes, Bucky is right there in front of him: the downward slant of his eyes, the shape of his jawline. The mild, wan tone of voice he has now, like he's never been loud in his life. He imagines tracing the side of Bucky's face. Down on the bartop, his fingers move slowly. So gently you could think he's never killed.

 

* * *

 

Eastward to Vladivostok; hopping back to Tianjin, then down to Shenzhen.

"What next?" Natasha asks, dry and amused. "There are conspiracy theories that Hydra did a deal with Hideki Tojo in the war. You wanna see if they check out, we'll fly to Japan. Then we can stop back and comb through Europe again, work our way down North Africa until we hit the Wakandan border, round off this Super Secret Soul-Searching World Tour of yours."

Steve looks at her sharply. "This isn't a joke."

"No, it isn't," she agrees. "But you're being a dumbass."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

She looks straight ahead, a smile playing across her lips. "Nick says Lila's doing great at soccer, by the way."

 

* * *

 

In the absence of a shield, Steve has been fighting with just his hands, mostly. He also carries a Glock 17 from Natasha's enormous handbag and an Eickhorn KM 2000 from Bucky's backpack. He keeps the gun in his nightstand. He keeps the knife under his pillow.

Most mornings, he pulls it out and unsheathes it just to check—for what, he isn't sure. Natasha eyes it warily, like it might jump out and bite at her.

"It's his, if that's what you wanted to know," Steve tells her.

"I know."

"It doesn't have a brain. It won't hurt you."

"I know," she repeats, a little more tightly.

"I just—" He laughs humorlessly. "It's stupid, but I feel... protected, with it. Back in the war, he used to—" A flash memory: "You remember on the freeway? He was good with it. Like an extension of himself."

"So which is it?" she asks. "The knife is him, you're saying, but it doesn't have a fucking brain. Which is it, Steve."

He stares at her. "Natasha."

"He's not your luck charm," Natasha says. "Or your teddy bear."

"I know," Steve snaps back. "Jesus Christ, I know, all right, the knife ain't him. He isn't a weapon. It—it helps, though. It just helps."

"Do you own a rosary?" she asks.

"What?"

"You're old-school Irish Catholic. A rosary."

He squints at her. "Not currently, no."

"Dog tags? Photos? Diaries?"

"No," he says. "Want me to unpack my entire duffel bag? I'll unroll all my underwear for you, if you need."

"No," she responds, then: "You need a weapon of your own. Stop borrowing."

"I'm an international war criminal. Pretty sure I don't have the luxury of having my own signature weapon anymore."

"We'll get you a spear or something. Very practical, very sexy. Save the knife for Sundays."

She pats his arm in a conciliatory sort of way. Sometimes, Steve doesn't even try to understand what she's getting at.

So he fights with just his hands, mostly. He's glad his gloves are thick.

 

* * *

 

They do end up heading back west, to a remote Hydra research base in Kazakhstan. Some of the staff onsite come quietly. Others don’t.

Steve and Natasha make quick work of a group of armed guards who’d charged them along a corridor. By the end of it, his gloves have soaked through to his skin. He peels them off and studies the blood dripping down the leather knucklepads. The smell of rust and salt heavy is under his nose. It’s nothing new, hasn't been for a decade or seven by now; only, he’d thought that once he was done being pimped out by politicians, he’d feel less—stripped bare.

“Steve,” Natasha says, to his five o’clock. “Charges along the northern wall are set.”

“Send a signal to local law enforcement before you blow it up,” he replies. He’s exhausted, he realizes. Lately he’s been dreaming of the markets back in Ankara, walking down the rows and rows of shops and feeling like he’s being followed. Not hunted, no, just watched with unscientific curiosity, perhaps longing.

 

* * *

 

This is how it ends: a phone call from Shuri, wunderkind princess of Wakanda.

"Captain Rogers," she says. "I'm calling to inform you that your friend has been asking after you. He does not say it in precise terms, but I think he wants to see you."

"What—Buck," Steve gets out. "Bucky? He's—he's awake?"

"Oh yes," Shuri says serenely. "Bucky has been awake for three months now. He is adjusting well. As I said, he wants to see you, Captain Rogers."

"How is he?"

"Finding peace, I think," answers Shuri. "He is terribly stubborn. I think he wants to pass some sort of self-evaluation of personhood before he lets himself see you, but at that rate he'll never see you again—his standards are ridiculously high. He is a wolf of a man, but that's good enough; he is not a machine to be fixed. I told him as much, anyway," she adds. "So an intervention must be staged. Won't you come back and put him out of his misery?"

"I—yeah. Yeah," Steve says, dry-throated, breathless. "Buck. Tell him I'm coming. Please. Tell him," he huffs, laughing, eyes suddenly wet, "I'll bring him a souvenir or something."

"Of course," she says, voice warm.

"Thank you, Shuri. Thank you so much."

He hangs up, scrubbing at his eyes, and turns towards Natasha. He opens his mouth, but no sound comes out.

"You okay, Steve?"

"I—yeah." There is a terrible, painful hope lodged in his sternum. He is trembling with it. "Natasha, he's awake. He's okay. He's—he's—Christ, I'm packing all this shit up right now. I'm going home."

"All right." She smiles wryly and pushes out of her armchair. "Go, you dumbass. It's about time."

She hugs him. He is so lucky, he thinks, to have had friends who know him like this.

 

* * *

 

Home happens two days later when he steps off the ramp of the Quinjet and finds T'Challa, flanked by five armored women, awaiting him. Behind them, someone shifts.

It's Bucky, his hair long and swept back in a half-ponytail, dressed in colorful Wakandan robes, looking like some sort of newly-minted, one-armed Jesus. Steve loves him like a chest full of bullet holes.

Bucky steps out in front of the group. His face is unreadable. Steve moves, as if by gravitational pull, towards him. When he stops in front of Bucky, Bucky's eyes search his face frantically, taking him in.

"Hey, Buck," Steve says. "It's me."

And then Bucky's arm is around him so tight that Steve feels like he can finally breathe. They're wrapped together, Bucky's face tucked into the crook of his neck, hot breath panting against his shoulder.

"Your stupid fucking hair," Steve whispers into the crown of Bucky's head. "I love it."

"I didn't even know you could grow a beard like that. You look like a God damn vagrant." Bucky pulls back to look at him again. He's grinning, wide-eyed and brilliant. "Where's my fuckin' souvenir, huh?"

"What, ain't I fuckin' enough?"

"No, fuck off and come back here when you've gotten me a keychain, asshole."

"How about I sock you a new one, how's that?"

"Just fine," Bucky says hoarsely, holding Steve even tighter around the middle.

 

* * *

 

They’re led to Bucky’s private quarters in the palace complex, which are spacious, but Steve stays pressed close to Bucky. If it were possible, he would bury himself into Bucky’s chest. He is carved from Bucky’s rib, or maybe Bucky is carved from his.

"You remember," Bucky begins, and Steve has to laugh a little at that, "when we built. A nest out of blankets and couch cushions, and we slept on it? And we—" Bucky furrows his eyebrows, frowning. "We told—we told—"

"We'd tell adventure stories. Pirates and cowboys," Steve finishes. That nest had built itself every weekend of the summer they were eleven years old. The discreteness of Bucky's past tense is not lost on Steve, but he finds that he doesn't care. "Yeah, I remember."

"I miss it," Bucky says softly.

Steve presses a hand between Bucky's shoulder blades, reveling in the solid warmth. "We can do it now, if you'd like."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah, 'course," says Steve. "Whatever you want, Buck."

Bucky grabs his wrist. "If you think this... if we'll be just like—old times. I don't. If."

"It's all right," Steve tells him. "The old Bucky, well, I don't think he'd know me anymore, not as good as you. Don't think he'd have felt to me like coming home."

Bucky's eyes flick up to his, wide and new: a man rebuilding himself. "But I do," he says, slowly realizing, and oh Lord, it isn't even a question.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was built on the emotional labor of women, namely Natasha Romanoff and me. The other foundation of this fic was the vibe of [this post.](http://3wworms.tumblr.com/post/163770910292/buchahan-whatever-our-souls-are-made-of-his)
> 
> My [Tumblr.](http://3wworms.tumblr.com)


End file.
